


moments

by toomoon (jjjat3am)



Category: H.O.T. (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 06:36:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16444700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjjat3am/pseuds/toomoon
Summary: Kangta caught Hee-joon’s look and almost flushed. Hee-joon worried, but the time when he’d been allowed to voice his suspicions had long since passed. The last time was 17 years ago, and he’d never said anything to Kangta then, so it made little sense to do it now.Tonight, Kangta was going to sing and dance, and tomorrow, he was going over to an old friend’s house to pick up a jacket, and everything was going to be fine.





	moments

**Author's Note:**

> As if I could resist the sweet siren song of old men being sad.
> 
> Biggest thanks to Mina, for holding my hand as we descend into old kpop hell together. 
> 
> For anyone that may be coming into this from other fandoms (thank you and welcome), there are notes at the end that contain everything you need to know about the pictured people. Feel free to ask if any piece of this is unclear. 
> 
> If you're a middle-aged Korean man that's found this story by googling your name, I'm really sorry about calling you old and also, please don't read this and [spoof it for a variety show, thanks.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc69_5MH0l4)

 

 

“I didn’t realize you’d kept all of this,” Kangta said quietly, smoothing his fingers thoughtlessly over Woo-hyuk's sleeve. The colors were still pristine and the lettering bright - the jacket had been lovingly kept and cared for, for a number of years. 

 

“I’d swipe things off the set while no one was looking and send them over to my parents for safekeeping,” Woo-hyuk shrugged, reclining on his chair. There were breaks between their attempts at singing their own songs at the karaoke machine, and they were badly needed. Woo-hyuk seemed mostly fine, actually, but Tony and Jae-won were struggling, and currently tended to by Hee-joon, like the years really had suddenly spun in reverse. 

 

“And you didn’t throw them away, after…” Kangta cut himself off, suddenly too aware of Woo-hyuk looking at him, as undecipherable as when they were teenagers. 

 

“I was never angry at H.O.T,” Woo-hyuk said, quietly. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t angry at Kangta, at some point. Still was, probably. In fact, that Woo-hyuk had even come was a miracle. Kangta had never been able to forget his face, after, twisted up in fury and betrayal, his voice sounding so calm as he cussed them out, standing in front of Tony and Jae-won like they needed to be protected.

 

“I have yours, if you want it,” Woo-hyuk broke into his thoughts suddenly. He was looking off somewhere into the darkness of the theatre and something in the way he hung his head seemed almost embarrassed. 

 

“You have my jacket?” Kangta asked, trying to shake off the memories for long enough to focus on the present. The director had begun to make noises about continuing the recording.

 

Woo-hyuk shrugged. “You left it in my room at some point,” he said.

 

It was like all the air left the room in a whoosh, and Kangta took a deep breath, trying to compensate. He suddenly felt too hot, aware of all the sweat that had gathered under his shirt. 

 

“And you just kept it?” he asked.

 

On the surface, it seemed like a fairly normal conversation. Friends meeting after years apart, attempting to figure out the location of things that had once been theirs and migrated towards the wrong owner. 

 

However, if you were in the group you’d know that the members tended to hang out in the common spaces instead of their small, dank rooms. As far as Kangta knew it was only he and Woo-hyuk that had ever spent any significant time in each other’s room. And if Kangta had left his jacket there, then-

 

“I kept everything, I told you,” Woo-hyuk said, a strange note in his voice. He rolled onto his feet with an enviably smooth motion, offering his hand to help Kangta up. “If you want it back, come over to my house tomorrow. I’m free in the afternoon.”

 

“Yeah, okay.”

 

Numbly, Kangta took his hand and let him pull him to his feet. The comedians were already starting their spiel, and the hated karaoke machine flashed to life, ready to determine their schedule for the next couple of weeks. 

 

He caught Hee-joon’s look and almost flushed. Hee-joon worried, but the time when he’d been allowed to voice his suspicions had long since passed. The last time was 17 years ago, and he’d never said anything to Kangta then, so it made little sense to do it now. 

 

Tonight, Kangta was going to sing and dance, and tomorrow, he was going over to an old friend’s house to pick up a jacket, and everything would be fine.

  
  


*

  
  


Kangta did not feel fine the next morning when he woke up, realized he’d all but agreed to go to Woo-hyuk's house and promptly panicked. 

 

He didn’t even know where Woo-hyuk lived now, it’s not like he could turn up at their old dorm and expect him to be there. That building had been turned into an office a long time ago. 

 

Then, he remembered that he didn’t have Woo-hyuk's new number (his old one was always diligently added to every new phone he got, even when it’d rang empty for years) and he agonized over having to ask Hee-joon for it for a while, only to realize that he did, in fact, have Woo-hyuk's new number, saved under the name ‘Woo-hyuk’s new number’. He must have gotten that sometime last night, which was awfully forward thinking of him.

 

Kangta ate breakfast and worried over having to actually call Woo-hyuk, only to decide on a quick and frankly messy text message that he was embarrassed about as soon as he’d sent it. 

 

Woo-hyuk replied in less than two minutes, and Kangta didn’t know what to do with that, so he just focused on the address instead. 

  
  


*

  
  


Woo-hyuk opened the door almost before Kangta had managed to ring the doorbell. There was a moment where they just stood awkwardly, staring at each other, Kangta’s finger hovering over the doorbell. Woo-hyuk seemed surprised to see him, even after he definitely knew he was coming. He was dressed down in sweatpants and a hoodie, hair uncombed and bare faced.

 

Something constricted tight in Kangta’s chest but he breathed through it, tried on a smile that must have looked awfully fake. “Hello,” he said, “did I interrupt?”

 

“No,” Woo-hyuk said, shaking his head, “not at all. I knew you were coming, didn’t I?”

 

“I thought maybe you’d started to become forgetful in your advanced age,” Kangta said before his brain to mouth filter caught up with him.

 

Woo-hyuk looked at him, wide-eyed and red-cheeked, and then, miraculously, he laughed. The strange tension in the air dissipated like it’d never been there. “You’re only two years younger than me,” he said. “Are you speaking from experience?”

 

That made Kangta laugh too, as he watched Woo-hyuk shove his feet into some sandals that were utterly inappropriate for the season and clashed terribly with the fuzzy socks he was wearing. It was an endearing sight, but he didn’t dare comment on it.

 

“Let’s go this way, it’s easier to get inside,” Woo-hyuk said, stepping out of his house and down the porch steps to lead him around the corner. The garage was a big building, big enough to fit two cars at the least. Woo-hyuk unlocked the side-door and gestured him in.

 

Inside, the neon lights gave the room an unreal glow, more like a science lab than anything else. There were numerous shelving units set up, meticulously labeled in Woo-hyuk's perfect handwriting. Most of the labels that Kangta could see had some variation of ‘H.O.T.’ on them. It was impressive.

 

“Where do you keep your cars then?” was the first thing he ended up asking, watching Woo-hyuk flip on some more light switches and hurry on between the shelves.

 

Absently, Woo-hyuk gestured towards the far corner, where a car was actually parked, though it was barely visible surrounded by boxes.

 

“I thought that was a prop,” Kangta said, “it looks like a toy car.”

 

“It’s electric,” Woo-hyuk sniffed. “I’m environmentally conscious.”

 

“Fancy,” Kangta muttered as Woo-hyuk disappeared again. He wandered over to the labeled boxes, touched the cover of one that said ‘H.O.T - concert tickets’. It was hardly dusty, which meant that either Woo-hyuk opened it up often, or he had an amazing cleaning routine. Both were equally possible.

 

“Found it!” Woo-hyuk called out, and Kangta followed the sound of his voice, only to find him hunched over a box, an olive green jacket in his arms. Something caught his eye up on the shelf and after a moment of confusion, he realized that it was his name written on the box. Not Kangta, but Chil-hyeon, a name Woo-hyuk never used when they spoke. He hadn’t even realized that Woo-hyuk knew how to spell it. 

 

There were several boxes up on the shelf, labeled with the names of the members. There was ‘H.O.T - Hee-joon - scripts’ and ‘H.O.T - Tony - costumes’, at least two boxes per members. Except for Kangta. Chil-hyeon took up a whole shelf, with over a dozen boxes.

 

A box was labeled ‘clothes’, and he wondered what he’d find if he opened it. His oversized gym shirt with the logo of his middle school on it? One of the soft cashmere sweaters that he’d taken off a photo shoot and felt guilty about never returning? The short shorts with cartoon characters printed on them that Woo-hyuk always claimed he hated, but Kangta caught him wearing once? 

 

Did the box labeled ‘letters’ contain scrap paper with lyrics he’d long since forgotten and outgrown? Did it have the bit of napkin he’d written ‘I like you’ on, once, when they were in a restaurant and anyone could have seen? Were there drawings, love notes, quiet arguments, all up in that box on Woo-hyuk's shelf? 

 

Was there a note that said ‘I’m sorry’?

 

Woo-hyuk was still talking, something about the year the jacket was made in, something significant about the embroidery. The neon lights above made him look washed out, tired. The shadows caught on the wrinkles around his eyes.

 

Kangta stood in the middle of the garage, caught between 18 and 38, watching the way Woo-hyuk's mouth moved as he talked and trembling under the weight of the years between them.

 

He crossed the distance in two long strides, reaching out to touch the soft skin of Woo-hyuk's wrist, where his veins looked translucent under his skin. Woo-hyuk froze. In the sudden silence, Kangta couldn’t even hear him breathe.

 

“You really did keep everything,” Kangta heard himself say in a tone that sounded a little bit like wonder. 

 

Woo-hyuk took one long shaking breath.

  
  


*

  
  


They wound up kissing against the shelves, boxes pushed aside and tumbling over themselves on their way to the floor, creating a chaos of papers and old clothes. Woo-hyuk didn’t even seem to notice, his hands gripping almost too tight around Kangta’s wrists, their bodies flush together.

 

He kissed like Kangta remembered, on the edge of frantic, sloppy, like they didn’t have enough time. They never did have enough time. It felt too hot to be a mirage, the shelves digging into Kangta’s back, the now strangely unfamiliar shape of Woo-hyuk's body against his front. The sounds they were making echoing in the empty space. 

 

“This is such a bad idea,” Woo-hyuk said, between gasps as they tried to catch their breaths. “An awful, terrible idea.”

 

“You kissed me first,” Kangta reminded him, then swallowed his protest with another kiss.

  
  


*

  
  


The sight was familiar - the slope of Woo-hyuk's shoulders covered in sweat, the bones of his spine moving as he tried to catch his breath. Down to the cluster of freckles on his back, everything about the afternoon felt like a terrible case of deja vu.

 

Woo-hyuk turned around to face him in a rustle of sheets and Kangta stared at his silhouette backlit by the afternoon light through the window, the shadows swallowing his wrinkles, erasing the traces of time.

 

“Well…” Woo-hyuk trailed off into silence. Kangta tried to read his face but his expression was cast in shadow. 

 

There was a long hair stuck onto the skin of Woo-hyuk's shoulder and Kangta reached out to brush it away, then lingered, pressing the back of his palm to the soft skin in the crook of his shoulder. 

 

Slowly, and indescribably sweetly, Woo-hyuk leaned into it, resting his cheek on Kangta’s hand. There was a burst of sound from outside the window, a car speeding by, and he could feel Woo-hyuk’s breathing, the muscles of his jaw and the touch of his soft exhale.

 

“Am I taking someone’s place?” Kangta asked, words slicing through the quiet. He meant in Woo-hyuk’s bed, in presuming that there was no one else in his life right now.

 

“A little late to ask that now, isn’t it?” Woo-hyuk asked. He didn’t sound like he cared about Kangta’s answer either way, but he could feel him moving away. “And the answer is no, there isn’t anyone.”

 

“Why not?” Kangta blurted out. Woo-hyuk let out an incredulous laugh.

 

“Why are you asking me this?” he said.

 

“Are you going to counter all my questions with other questions?” Kangta shot back. He’d scooted back on the bed so he was sitting against the headboard, putting some distance between them. Woo-hyuk reached over to turn on the lamp on the bedside table, the stark light throwing everything into sharp contrast.

 

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Woo-hyuk told him but it wasn’t as cutting as Kangta would have expected. Instead, he just sounded defeated. “It turns out that a 40-year-old still hung up on his teenage relationship isn’t exactly a hot relationship prospect for anyone. My therapist hates you, by the way.”

 

“But you weren’t in a relationship when we were teenagers,” Kangta told him, puzzled. He was trying his very best to remember anyone they met in those days that Woo-hyuk could have gotten together with, and failing. They were far too busy, and besides when they had any free time Woo-hyuk was with-

 

“Take your time,” Woo-hyuk told him, sounding almost amused.

 

“...you’re talking about me,” Kangta finally managed, coming to a slow realization. Woo-hyuk inclined his head slightly, but remained silent. “But we were just, I don’t know. Not a relationship.”

 

“I was in love with you,” Woo-hyuk told him, calmly. Kangta stared at him, trying to process what he was hearing. “But it’s not like that matters now, does it?”

 

“Of course it matters, if I’d known-”

 

“Nothing would have been different,” Woo-hyuk cut him off harshly. He wouldn’t meet Kangta’s eyes, instead turning around in a quiet rustle of sheets.

 

Kangta stared at his back, lightly freckled skin stretched over the muscles, the defined ridges  of his spine. Woo-hyuk’s words had dredged up a bunch of memories he’d thought he’d done a good job trying to forget. 

 

Eventually, he reached out to place his palm carefully between Woo-hyuk’s shoulder blades, feeling his sharp intake of breath.

 

“I loved you too,” he told him, quietly, and knew the truth of it, “and I know it doesn’t change anything now, but I needed you to know.”

 

Woo-hyuk let out a sharp shuddering breath. When he spoke, his voice sounded cracked and unsteady.

 

“So what now?” he asked.

 

Kangta could feel his heartbeat faintly through his palm. Or maybe it was the echo of his and he was just fooling himself. Still, he reached into whatever well of courage he pretended to have when he was a teenager and forced himself to speak.

 

“We could stay like this, if you wanted. For a little while,” he said. “Then we could go out for dinner. Or we could stay in and I could convince you to cook. Tony says you’re a fabulous cook.”

 

“Tony is a little tattle-tale,” Woo-hyuk said, and Kangta could hear the traces of a smile in his voice, “the next time he and Jaeduck have relationship problems, I’m sending him to you, since he likes telling you things so much.”

 

“He says I give terrible advice,” Kangta pouted, “and he never tells me anything.”

 

“Trust me, you’re better off,” Woo-hyuk snorted. “I’d pay good money to unlearn some of the details.”

 

In the ensuing silence, Kangta moved closer, enough to press against Woo-hyuk’s back, carefully slinging his hand over his middle to rest it on the soft skin of his stomach. 

 

“So?” he asked quietly, gratified when Woo-hyuk shivered. “Are you letting me stay for dinner?”

 

Woo-hyuk sighed. “No ramyeon,” he said, “and I’ll put vegetables in your food and you’ll eat them without complaint.”

 

Kangta hid his smile by pressing a kiss to the skin of Woo-hyuk’s shoulder. Woo-hyuk’s hand covered his where it was laid over his stomach. The room was quiet except for the sounds of their breathing. Kangta closed his eyes, for once not inclined to mull over the past or worry about the future.

 

“Yeah, okay.”

 

Staying in the present felt just fine.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Notes:  
> \- oh boy  
> \- first of all, [episodes 557](http://kshow123.net/show/infinity-challenge/episode-557.html) and [558](url) of Infinity Challenge, in which somewhat estranged members of H.O.T reunite after more than a decade to perform together again. It's what inspired this story.  
> \- H.O.T were part of the first wave of kpop and were one of the first really successful groups. They disbanded in 2001 after a contract disagreement with SM entertainment. Kangta and Hee-joon were the ones who choose to stay with SM, while Tony, Jae-won and Woo-hyuk formed another group at another company, which also eventually disbanded.   
> \- Woo-hyuk's house was written before I watched his I Live Alone episode, and so it bears no resemblance to the real thing except for his electric car and his garage stuffed full of H.O.T memorabilia.  
> \- find me on [tumblr](https://neyvenger.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/holtdad)


End file.
